Don't try to bend the spoon.
In the classic 1999 film The Matrix, the protagonist, Neo, played Keanu Reeves, goes to see an oracle. In the waiting room, he happens upon one of the oracle’s child disciples who is sitting zazen and melting a metal spoon with mind.
Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. (Source IMDB)
By the same token, I have long wondered if there is no radio spectrum. This fact is among the reasons that the unlicensed regime works so well. It is spectrum policy, just without the spectrum
The jurisprudence underlying the Part 15 rules is that unlicensed spectrum is not spectrum at all…. It is merely an idea – a concept – a way of describing and organizing the physical world in our minds and in our actions. Spectrum is a legal and engineering construct to control for an immutable fundamental physical property… (Source: Unlicensed to Kill)
The Part 15 rules simply consider what is the maximum amount of irradiated power which can be emitted by a device without an unacceptable probability of causing harmful interference.
However, most of spectrum policy other than the Part 15 rules deals with regulating the “airwaves”. Yet treating radio operations as spectrum or airwaves or property is a false paradigm. This point was driven home to me a few years ago when I was an FCC staffer. I was once filling out my timesheet at the FCC. One of the lines on the sheet was “spectrum” and it dawned on me that I was spending more than 66.7% of my time dealing with something which had momentum, but no mass. Somewhat paradoxically, electromagnetic energy behaves simultaneously like a wave and like a particle, carried by photons. This is an important and powerful observation. In fact, it was for this observation (the so-called photo-electric effect), and not General or Special Relativity, that Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize.
So, while we are regulating the airwaves, who is regulating the photons?!
Insight: I raise this issue now because just last week the FCC announced the (re)establishment of its Spectrum Task Force. Honestly, I am not exactly sure what implications for radio policy of considering the dually of electromagnetic radiation as both a wave and a particle might be; however, going forward perhaps the STF should undertake critical rethinking of this crucial policy area from the basics up.
Since we cannot bend the spoon, perhaps it is time we bend ourselves.
Tags: FCC, Optimal level of regulation, Part 15, Policy Development, Spectrum, Wireless Communications